What is disturbing to me is in the last week and a half I have reread all of his books, and I am finding so many discrepancies between the books. One example, in Better Not Cry he says he ate a life size wax Santa and had to get his stomach pumped, but then in Dry he says " I had gotten my stomach pumped before after eating a wax Santa off the Christmas tree." Also, in Magical Thinking he goes into graphic detail on his sex life with the "undertaker" but when you read Dry, come to find out, that suddenly the undertaker is a heterosexual with a "stacked girlfriend" -- and then he says the undertaker told the girlfriend he wouldn't kick him outta bed ha ha ha" and then follows it with "One time the undertaker and I were so drunk that he didn't kick me out of bed, when we woke up naked we were mortified, and I almost wanted to remind him of that." So which story was real? Is the "I DATED AN UNDERTAKER" chapter in Magical Thinking chapter true, or is this other true? Frustrating!! (I understand the Santa thing could've easily been exaggerated but that graphic detail about his sexual relationship with the guy, and then separately, .... It just made me feel betrayed lol, and annoyed. Has anyone else noticed this?

Great read. Funny and sweet. It's sometimes a little repetitive. Or getting the facts is. Because each essay has to stand alone in other contexts, he needs to review the facts. But for a book, it seems like this is something the editor could take care of.

Regardless, I'm a big Burroughs fan, and this is a classic.

The government called and said we can't afford David Sedaris anymore. It's the recession, y'know. Guess it's the poorest man's David Sedaris: Augusten Burroughs.

Burroughs would be better if he'd at least admit he's a bitchy gay man instead of trying to tack on "But everybody is okay" drivel messages at the end of his bitchiness. He reminds me of guys I know who make up obviously bullshit stories made more annoying by the obvious fact they expect you are impressed by it (I'm not). Only vaguely amusing... (Or people who tack on "Now don't get offended" before being absolutely offensive dicks...)

I couldn't help but remember all of Bill Hicks' anti-advertising people bits when reading this. Wonder what Hicks would have made of Don Draper. I dig how immoral and ethical Draper is, and how he relates advertising to what people think everybody else thinks and try to conform to that view (however, I'm never impressed by his epiphanies. I don't care about selling things catchily). That's Burrough's problem. Not that he's good enough for me to bother with. I only read this 'cause it was a Christmas prezzie. (Christmas rolls around once a year and I'm gonna get more books I feel obligated to read... I'd rather read my own crap.)

Funny that he refers to Joan Didion in this book, as she had a "Magical Thinking" book too.

It was funny. Not nearly as funny as the cover review blurb from USA today makes it out to be; not truly necessary to get the tissue box out. Is sex all that important? Painful? How many times do breast implants have to be mentioned, and why would a gay man care so much about them?

It was still a funny read with more than slapstick, an apt commentary on a lot of twisted garbage in society, and succeeds in threading a story through seemingly disparate essays. Some essays do seem to reintroduce material you've seen before. Friend Suzanne is redescribed in such a way that makes me think the editing wasn't fully up to snuff.

After a childhood/20's like his, even what's normal and mundane must be viewed from a distance, and maybe that's the humor. You get to see everything like an alien visiting earth, because you are.

Separating the book from the man, it is amazing that someone even survived half the things Burroughs talks about. Who would you be if you'd grown up in his (size 13) shoes? Who knew that Catholic priests could be so twisted? (Many of us.) And in spite of the focus on differences, we all share a lot of the human experience: troublesome landlords, psychos on the dating scene, crazy relatives, bad decisions, people that drop you for no reason at all, the amazing indignance of so many at so little, stress over age and differential age, the fact that a lot of people are trying to hide something but it slips out eventually.

I'm glad he decided to start writing, but I'll still be drinking Dr Pepper.

Author Augusten Burroughs has hit a home run again in this funny, sometimes acerbic collection of true anecdotes that reveals the dark thoughts we all sometimes have, and then carries them out to their seemingly insane conclusions...but with wit and that satirical twist.

These snippets are not presented in any particular chronological order, but begin in childhood, with memories about a Tang commercial, and lead us through the panicky drinking days and the one-night stands.

One of my favorites is the chapter about a rat he finds in the bathtub in the middle of the night, and the panic that ensues. Described beautifully in this excerpt:

"The fact was: if a rat/thing managed to claw its way out of my tub and enter the main area of the studio apartment, I would never be able to locate it. Everywhere there were mounds of foreign magazines, month-old newspapers, a thousand or more empty sixteen-ounce beer cans. I happened to live in squalor that was more than four-feet deep throughout the apartment. If the rat/thing made it into my debris field, it could easily make a nest for itself under the bed in an old aluminum beef vindaloo container or it could simply die beneath an old copy of Italian Vogue. It could die and it could rot."

He then creates a scenario in which he quests for a way to eradicate the rat that had me rolling around with laughter, imagining myself in a similar situation.

And then there's the chapter on telemarketers, and how they call numerous times at night and repeatedly, with the "frequent urgency of dumped boyfriends." Now who hasn't wanted to seek revenge on them? Well, read on and learn....

There are thoughts about almost anything that may have crossed your mind, but that you were afraid to articulate. This author crams "Magical Thinking: True Stories" with all of those thoughts and more.

As I turned the final, very satisfying page, I wanted "seconds." But instead, I'll just have to occasionally pick it up again and savor the moments. Five happy stars for this one!

This book is HILARIOUS! I loved it. There are stories that made me laugh so hard in bed that I woke up my husband!

I want to rate it somewhere between "liked it" and "really liked it". I found Burroughs as he characterizes himself to be alternately likable (sometimes even lovable), and too mean. Sometimes when I knew he was being funny but 'at the expense' funny, and then I was not sure I liked him. But sometimes he'd hit on an acerbic jab that I agreed with and so then I'd be cheering him on. And then he'd turn around and be vulnerable and expose himself, so then I'd like him again. He's certainly an interesting character. It's like a window into 'what if my parents were not just strange and confusing, but actually mentally absent, crazy and/or abusive?' Oh and I guess I should add 'if I were a gay man who worked in advertising but longed to be a writer and lived in Manhattan'. So anyhow it's weird, I'm not really sure how much I liked this book, yet I kept wanting to read it and it did leave me wanting more.

I like how Burroughs brought in short stories into a big book!

I laughed, I cried, I decided not to read it on the treadmill at the gym when I got to the chapter titled "Holy Blow Jobs".

I tried so hard to read this. "Running with Scissors" was fantastic but this was just sad. The stories were very interesting (hyper-dramatic at times but that made it more intriguing honestly) but extremely problematic. He talks about Trans people several times within the first few essays and uses transphobic slurs repeatedly. He also mocks Trans people in his wanting to change his gender to make a drastic, attention-seeking change in his life, not because he actually identifies as a woman. While it's fine to question one's gender as it is fluid, it's beyond privileged in that he acts as though gender is a costume while Trans women (particularly those of color) are being killed due to their identity. This is not ok to me.

Burroughs unfortunately had a very screwed up childhood. He is gay and was in a relatioship with a guy who had aids and then passed away....and then he admittedly drank his way through his 20s. He then became a writer and wrote Running with Sizzors and Dry. This collection of true but meaningless stories is a little weird and really about screwed up occurrances in his life. Not into his language, or his style of writting ,and not something I enjoyed or really cared to finish. Although I heard Running with Sizzors had a good rating I'm going to pass on the rest of his books too.

This book has that very specific early aughts brand of racism, ableism and fatphobia. Whew. It’s also lacking the emotional center and direction of his first two books. Honestly feels like a David Sedaris ripoff.